Jennifer Horgan: Ireland needs more caretakers like Natasha O’Brien and Cara Darmody
Natasha O'Brien outside Limerick Courthouse at Judge O'Donnell's last court sitting. On the night she was assaulted, Nathasha was doing Cathal Crotty’s job for him — keeping the peace, maintaining order, protecting the integrity of our country, acting as a caretaker. Picture: Brian Arthur
From thirteen, I got the bus home from school. Throngs of students joined en route, some of them less well-behaved than others — uniformed little pots and pans, boiling over with teenage energy and mischief. You know, the smokers, the swearers, the loudmouth commentators on ‘yer one’s rack'. Thankfully, there was always someone there to turn the heat down. In those days, most city buses had a conductor as well as a driver. Every afternoon he was there, managing the mayhem. A caretaker.
He’d smile, share a nicety, and would always place himself in the thick of whatever was brewing. He was grandfatherly, mumbled more than spoke, but he was omnipresent too, and so I felt safe and protected, rooted in the familiar.
